Voice of the people (letter).

Sports And Quotas

May 27, 1995|By Cynthia M. Bretthauer.

CHICAGO — Stephen Chapman's "Unsportsmanlike conduct" column (Op-Ed, April 20) calls into question the media's ability to facilitate the public debate on affirmative action. Chapman criticized the Rhode Island judge who found Brown University in violation of Title IX (the federal law that mandates the provision of equal athletic and other educational opportunities to women) because the judge allegedly advocated the adoption of a quota system.

A review of the opinion, however, shows that the judge performed a thoughtful analysis of equal athletic opportunity that has been used by the U.S. since 1979 and endorsed and adopted by numerous courts. Further, after finding Brown in violation of Title IX, the court never advocated implementing a quota system.

First, the judge determined that athletic participation rates for females were substantially disproportionate to Brown's female undergraduate enrollment (51 percent of Brown's undergraduate students were female, as compared to only 38 percent of its athletes). Second, the judge found that Brown did not have a history and continuing practice of athletic-program expansion that was demonstrably responsive to the developing interests of women athletes.

Finally, the judge found that there was unmet athletic interest for women because Brown had demoted a women's intercollegiate team to club status and had failed to fund three women's teams that wished to compete at the intercollegiate level.

Brown would not have been found in violation of Title IX if it had met any prong of the three-part test; moreover, when he found evidence of sex discrimination, the judge did not order Brown to "adopt a quota" or drop a single men's team. Instead, he ordered Brown to develop a plan to provide equal opportunities for women. Brown need not field athletic teams that "precisely mirror the student body," as Chapman suggests; it needs only to fully and effectively accommodate the athletic interests of women by providing four additional intercollegiate women's sports.